Re: 'HTML 5' and some poem markup?

At 20:19  +0200 5/10/07, Dr. Olaf Hoffmann wrote:
>Philip TAYLOR wrote:
>
>>
>>  There is considerable merit in this proposal, but what it
>>  represents is one end of a continuum (the minimalist end).
>>  At the other end is a language so rich that it can be
>>  used to mark up every known form of text, in any language,
>>  and of any era, with total precision, but that is so vast
>>  that no human would ever be able to remember the name of
>>  each and every element, let alone the attribute(s) that each
>>  permits or requires.
>
>Well, I agree, HTML does not require to have specific elements
>not related to text (remember: HyperTextMarkupLanguage).
>Poems are text, this is the domain of a text markup
>language. audio, video, canvas etc is more related to
>SMIL - and there is not much problem to use some
>SMIL profile to extend XHTML to get some useful (!)
>support for such elements. Maybe canvas requires
>another.

This leaves rather wide open the question "what HTML element is the 
correct one to use for embedding a SMIL file?".  The proposed answer 
is "video, or audio for non-visual presentations".  SMIL is an 
integration language (that's what I standards for, here), and is 
correctly used to express integration questions;  the proposed audio 
and video elements merely enable consistent embedding in HTML.

The universe of media types for which we might like to have 
consistent embedding and handling is happily small.  In addition, 
distinct media types tend to need some unique considerations (e.g. 
audio and video have temporal behavior, audio has a volume, and so 
on).  Text is, of course, itself a media type in this sense.

The universe of textual expression forms is, alas, not small, and 
they are all specializations of a general text capability.  If we do 
poetry, should we also do biblical psalms (which are specializations 
of poetry, and quite easily found on the web)?

-- 
David Singer
Apple/QuickTime

Received on Friday, 5 October 2007 23:53:08 UTC